Jonathan Spencer is a social anthropologist from the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

 and currently Head of Subject. He is also a professor of the Anthropology of South Asia. His field of interest include nationalism, politics, violence, Buddhism and Sri Lanka. He has published many works on politics of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan civil war.

Jonathan Spencer has also made significant contributions to the history and theory of anthropology. Together with his University of Edinburgh colleague, Alan Barnard, the two have produced a history of anthropological theory which continues to be a widely-used textbook at institutions of higher education.

Notable publications

• A Sinhala Village in a Time of Trouble: Politics and Change in Rural Sri Lanka (1990) - Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press
  Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
  
  
• Post-colonialism and the Political Imagination (1997)
• Fatima and the Enchanted Toffees: An Essay on Contingency, Narrative and Therap (1997)
• On Not Becoming a Terrorist: Problems of Memory, Agency and Community in the Sri Lankan Conflict (2000) - University of California Press
  University of California Press
  University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
  
  
• British Social Anthropology: A Retrospective
• Anthropology, Politics and the State: Democracy and Violence in South Asia (2007) - Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press
  Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...